A supporting system for effective construction and sharing of scientific databases by general researchers

摘要

A supporting system is presented for effective construction and sharing of scientific databases in a research environment, where various databases are constructed by general users who are often not familiar with the Information Retrieval System (IRS) (ORION) and the DataBase Management System (DBMS) (ADABAS). Although the general-purpose commercial IRS and DBMS are useful for scientific use, their DBA interfaces are not convenient for general users, and expert's assistance is required in database management. Therefore, we have adopted ORION and ADABAS as basic software and implemented a supporting system called COMDBS (Controlling Monitor of DataBase Systems). It consists of a database called DBAT (DataBase Administration Table) storing dictionary information on the individual databases and a set of commands for their effective construction and utilization. DBAT is accessed in executing the commands, and necessary controls are made automatically. With the assistance of COMDBS, users can construct and share their databases easily by themselves with full functions of ORION and ADABAS. Now, at the Hokkaido University Computing Center, about 30 databases have been constructed by general users.